Marinetech

Several of us went to Cabrillo High to meet and exchange ROV building ideas. This school is a mini Monterey Bay Aquarium. The students are really lucky to have this type of a facility at their disposal. We met Bob Ranard who is the man who has, for two years in a row, taught, pushed, motivated, and facilitated the students building and winning in the Nationals for ROV building and piloting. These students form teams and build "mission specific" bots. Last year their team consisted of two young women and two young men who placed 7th in Nationals this past June. Nationals was held at NASA's Johnson Space Center in the Neutral Bouyancy Lab. This is the pool that contains the space station mock-up for astronaut training. They won the Engineers Excellence Award, which Bob says is better than placing 1st. The photos were incredible. It seems like a once in a life-time chance for these students. Amanda, who was the co-pilot, spoke to us about construction the of their bot and the team element. She also told us about the journals that each student kept throughout the process and how valuable they became when it was time to troubleshoot specific issues. The big thing that I think was stressed more than anything was the K.I.S.S. element for building a ROV.
All in all we had a really good time and learned quite a bit from Bob and Amanda. Bob, thanks for the box of "think out of the box" pieces and parts. Now that our minds are all realing with new ideas and concepts for our ROV's we were off to start building.
We look forward to seeing Bob and the ROV team from Cabrillo High back at MDT when our ROV's are ready to fly.